Healthy Paranoia in D&D

Author: Audere

Healthy paranoia means acknowledging that your party faces life-or-death situations regularly, often against unknown opponents with unknown abilities, and taking sensible precautions. If your character wants to live, or wants their friends to live, a degree of healthy paranoia is natural. Many precautions and countermeasures discussed here will be most relevant to casters, and particularly Wizards, though all players and parties can benefit with an awareness of the concepts involved.

Why Be Paranoid?

Enchantment and illusion spells, shapeshifters, mind control effects, memory modification, invisibility–enemies may have access to any of these and more. Often, parties are ill-equipped to handle such threats. Even just rolling badly on a few saves against what was meant to be a medium difficulty encounter can spell doom for a party. Being an adventurer means being a target. Being an adventurer means being at war.

Also, playing paranoid is fun. Well, it is for some people. We encourage you to at least give it a try. Coming up with countermeasures is fun. Foiling enemy plans is fun. Telling the DM, “Ah, I prepared for that,” is fun. Especially when they’re surprised. Is this adversarial? Maybe a little. No more so than trying to defeat the enemy in combat, though. Sometimes it’s fun to play out the fantasy of being a sensible, competent adventurer.

But What About the DM?

Realistically, you are playing at a table with a DM that wants you to have fun. They probably don’t want the party to TPK. They may even go out of their way to prevent TPKs. So why worry about it?

Well, we’ve mentioned that being paranoid can be fun regardless. But there’s also the roleplaying aspect. Your character doesn’t know that their world is controlled by an omnipotent god who wants them to have fun. They only know that they keep encountering bandits and necromancers and mind flayers who want to kill them. Playing a character who really takes threats seriously can help you immerse yourself in their situation, more deeply than putting on a voice or hating elves, even. Taking threats seriously affects nearly every decision you make. It can even help elevate tension at the table. If you take the threat of being killed or subverted seriously, maybe other players will see it as more of a consideration as well.

Traps

Many parties are ill-prepared for traps and go around dungeons touching things and running around corners willy nilly. Unfortunately, they can do terrible things, like kill you, without being so kind as to give you a turn to kill them first!

Surprise/Initiative

Surprise is a huge party killer. A group of monsters who surprise the party can focus attacks on priority targets at their leisure and then mop up the survivors. A similar threat, though not quite as bad as surprise, is simply rolling poorly on initiative. An encounter with a group of mind flayers that would be survivable through good use of cover and control spells can destroy a party caught out of position and low in initiative with mind blasts, mind blasts, and more mind blasts.

Mind Control/Mental Influence

Charm person. Suggestion. Phantasmal force. Dominate person. Mass suggestion. There are many spells which can remove a character’s agency or even turn them against the party. Even more terrifying, there are many monster abilities which can cause similar effects, such that counterspell and dispel magic can’t help you. If the target of these spells or abilities is powerful, this can be a disaster.

Memory Alteration

Modify memory is the main effect that can cause this, but there are some monsters that can alter memories through other means as well. DMs also sometimes homebrew monsters such as the False Hydra with abilities in this vein. Memory alteration presents a terrible threat because it’s subtle; without confidence in your memories, how can you be confident in anything else?

Impersonation

Disguise self. Alter self. Seeming. Simulacrum. Doppelgangers. Changelings. Oblexes. Even beyond these spells and classic impersonator monsters, there are many monsters with Change Shape abilities which let them assume an arbitrary humanoid form. Many impersonators don’t have access to the knowledge or abilities of the impersonated, but some do. 

Possession

Closely related to both mind control and impersonation. The main difference from impersonation is that discerning the possession is more difficult. A possessor is more likely to have access to the knowledge or even abilities of the possessed.

Silence/Visual Obscurement

A spellcaster in a party often pulls a lot of weight, so anything that restricts their abilities can spell disaster.

Antimagic

Antimagic presents one of the most terrifying and difficult to counter threats for a caster. Particularly at high levels, it’s important to plan ahead for antimagic fields.

Disarmament

Most player characters are far less effective without access to weapons, foci, or magic items.

Zone of Truth

Okay, this isn’t a huge threat, but there are some neat countermeasures. Sometimes you really want to lie in a zone of truth!

Sensible Dungeoneering

In 5E, there’s little reason to interact with anything directly in a dungeon or other hostile environment. Countless traps can be avoided by having an unseen servant open the door, or pick up the thing, or get the book. Or a mage hand. A familiar. Even a skeleton.

Furthermore, certain minions can even save the party from a TPK even if the party themselves had little chance to act. 

In particular, it is eminently sensible to have at least one unseen servant up at all times in a hostile environment, with ongoing orders to administer potions of healing to downed party members. That way, even if the party is knocked out by surprise or a terrible trap, they may still have a chance to get back up.

Also, someone in the party should have detect magic up, and if anyone has a familiar or found steed or similar, the minion should be the one to turn corners before the party.

Secure Resting

An adventuring party is particularly vulnerable when resting. Why? Well, why do you rest? Parties taking a short or long rest are often low on hit points, spell slots, and other resources. Thus, it’s important to establish a safe resting area. Many spells can be helpful for this: alarm, rope trick, Leomund’s tiny hut, Mordenkainen’s magnificent mansion.

There are a couple things to keep in mind which are not well known. First, you can stack tiny huts. Simply place them at slightly different heights so that they are nested. This way, even if an enemy approaches the party with dispel magic, it will have to expend significant resources to get in, and may even be unable to do so. For example, some monsters have 3/day dispel magic. If you stack 6 huts, such a monster will be unable to get in.

Second, if you are a Wizard, resting can serve as an effective panic button. In an encounter which is going terribly, your party can retreat into a rope trick. The rope trick only lasts an hour, but if you need to rest for longer, you can take 10 minutes inside the rope trick to cast Leomund’s tiny hut, and then drop out with your party for the last action of the casting. This way you can take on the enemies from the safety of the tiny hut or even take a full long rest.

Passive Perception, Surprise Immunity, and Initiative Buffs

The simplest way to defend against surprise is passive Perception. A level 5 Wizard with a mere 8 Wisdom who takes proficiency in the Perception skill and uses their familiar’s senses has a passive Perception of 17, which should be enough to defeat the Stealth of many monsters. Basically anyone important should have proficiency in Perception, but if your allies don’t, it’s all the more important that you do.

Of course, the best defense against surprise is immunity. The Alert feat is excellent for this. Ideally, at least one party member is immune to surprise. If you get a chance to obtain a weapon of warning, it is an excellent magic item. Even if you reach a level where all of the attunement slots of every party member are filled, your familiar can attune to it.

Finally, the best defense against losing initiative is of course initiative bonuses. Again the Alert feat is excellent. The importance of initiative really cannot be understated. Ask your DM if you can take the Fey Touched feat for gift of alacrity, and if you can, rest cast it on the party every morning. If you’re playing a Paladin, consider Oath of the Watchers, which we at Tabletop Builds believe to be the strongest Paladin subclass in the game. (A full guide to the Paladin class is coming soon.) For those of you playing a Wizard, consider subclasses that provide bonuses to initiative, like War Magic and Chronurgy.

Saving Throw Buffs

Not all of the most terrifying things in D&D provide saves, but the vast majority of them do. (Or they use attack rolls, and take the form of big damage, but those aren’t the most terrifying things.) Having strong saving throws is an excellent form of general defense. Feats like Lucky and Resilient can help with this, but the most potent saving throw buffs tend to be party-based, rather than individual.

The big saving throw buffer is the Paladin. Aura of Protection is so excellent that when we discuss the most optimized parties, we find that having a Paladin is basically mandatory. Having a Paladin isn’t actually mandatory in any game, of course; in fact, most parties are probably better served by having a good controller, if you really have to choose. The point is that giving +4-5 to all saves for the entire party is insane. If you do play a Paladin, we strongly recommend that you prioritize increasing Charisma with your ASIs, like we discussed in our Basic Build Series Paladin. Watchers is also particularly excellent here for one of its Channel Divinities, Watcher’s Will, which can give an entire party advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves for a minute.

The other big party saving throw buffs are bless and Emboldening Bond. Bless is relatively easy to access, since Paladins and Clerics both get access to it. Emboldening Bond, a 1st level Peace Domain Cleric feature, can give party members a +1d4 bonus to saving throws (as well as any ability check or attack roll, once per turn.) This makes Peace one of the strongest Divine Domains, and makes a single level of Peace Cleric one of the strongest dips in the game.

Artificers can also use Flash of Genius to provide a saving throw buff when needed, which is significant, particularly since they can decide to use it after the roll (as per the general rules on reactions.)

A party with Aura of Protection, bless, and Emboldening Bond can expect to regularly have about a +10 bonus to saving throws. Such a party is well-equipped to face threats that would TPK parties without such defenses. 

Diagnostics

Many subtle and terrifying effects are so because they can catch you off guard. General divination spells such as divination, commune, and contact other plane can help you stay prepared and verify your party’s integrity. Ideally, a party should cast a litany of divinations every day, including identify on every party member and detect magic to scan the party and resting area.

If anyone in the party has access to zone of truth and/or detect thoughts, they should be used regularly to verify that nobody in the party is possessed, under any overt mental influences, or planning to betray the party in any way. To protect against memory modification, you can keep an encrypted journal and review it regularly. 

Access to exotic senses such as blindsight can protect a party from all manner of sensory trickery. A bat familiar is perfect for this. A Wizard with a bat familiar can use its senses regularly out of combat, and even when not using its senses, the bat can notify the wizard telepathically of any discrepancies between its regular sight and its 60-foot blindsight.

Dispellation

A party should have at least one caster capable of casting dispel magic. Dispel magic can solve many terrible situations when fighting spellcasters, the most terrifying enemies in the game.

Furthermore, a party should regularly (perhaps on a semi-random weekly basis) conduct cleansings using whatever of dispel magic, lesser/greater restoration, and remove curse which they have access to.

Identity Verification

There are many ways to verify the identities of party members. The simplest is some sort of password keychain. Rather than simply having a password, which is easy to steal, a party should have some sort of call-and-response pattern that they can use to identify one another which isn’t easily discernible from mere observation. For example, whenever a party member asks another how they’re doing, some aspect of the response could be based on some aspect of the question. Or more blatantly, a party member could say “glass orange” and have some algorithm by which the responder decides to say “rubber asparagus” or “window dressing” or whatever, with the understanding that such phrases are never to be reused. 

There are also various magical means of identity verification, such as:

• Mending. Have the party members carry parts of a broken object and to verify that they’re real, attempt to mend them. Fakes will not mend with the original pieces. To be even more secure, you could instead have everyone carry cut-off locks of each other’s hair. To verify someone’s identity, pluck a hair from the shortened area and attempt to mend it with hairs from the separated lock; if it fails, someone may be an imposter.
• Alarm. When you cast the spell, you can designate creatures that won’t set off the alarm. Anyone who appears to be a party member but sets off the alarm is an imposter. If you want to use this while out and about, you can carry dollhouse doors with the spell cast on it. You can even have party members carry dollhouse doors with alarms that they aren’t exempt from so that they can send you messages from up to a mile away.
• Illusory script. Similar to alarm, you can designate creatures who can read the true message. Perhaps you write a long sequence of characters, keep them covered, and selectively reveal them and ask party members to read them. This has the benefit of lasting continuously for 10 days. Truesight can foil this, but there is a way to defeat even truesight: simply designate everyone except the party as able to see the true message, and have the illusory message contain the relevant characters.
• Arcane lock. This spell also allows you to designate creatures who can bypass it. It’s very convenient to use and lasts indefinitely, so if you get a chance to scribe arcane lock there’s no reason not to cast it on all of the party’s containers with only party members able to open them, and to get in the habit of regularly opening things for each other and asking each other to get things from bags.
• Immovable object. If you have this spell, and you get to a level where you’re regularly rest casting it for 24-hour immovable objects, or even making permanently immovable objects, there’s no reason not to use this for identity verification.

There are other spells that can verify identities, but these tend to be the most convenient and reliable. 

What methods your party uses depends on their abilities, spells, and willingness to play along, but at minimum you should have some manner of password key-chain which you use at least once per day.

Low Cost Defensive Buffs and Rest Casting

There are many helpful defensive buffs in the game which a party has little reason not to cast, if it has access to them. In particular, non-concentration spells with long durations can be cast just before ending a long rest using leftover slots, such that the caster regains the slots immediately after. We call this “rest casting.” Gift of alacrity, aid, water breathing, death ward, heroes’ feast, and mind blank are great to cast regularly, particularly using rest casting.

For more on rest casting, read our full article on it.

Access to Robust Escape Options

How do you defend against being grappled in a zone of silence? The simplest method is to have Acrobatics proficiency and hope you can escape. Another method is for an ally to use a forced movement effect such as the Repelling Blast Eldritch Invocation, breaking the grapple. You may also be able to do this yourself using the Telekinetic feat. Finally, an ally could cast dispel magic on the silence. Of course, if you’re a Sorcerer, you could simply use Subtle Spell, which is an excellent Metamagic in general.

How do you counter being trapped in a fog cloud or darkness spell? If possible, you should have access to some manner of teleportation that doesn’t require sight, or that can circumvent line-of-sight restrictions. For example, you could use your action to see through your bat familiar’s senses and use your bonus action to cast misty step, or you could cast dimension door, which is quite reliable.

Note that most teleportation spells such as misty step, thunder step, dimension door, far step, scatter, and teleport have only verbal components. This makes them great in situations where your hands or bound or you don’t have access to M components, but not in silence. The only teleportation spell that doesn’t have a V component is steel wind strike.

A great measure against being trapped in various situations is contingency. For example, a contingency of dimension door set to trigger when you alternate winking your eyes three times. However, contingency won’t help you in a full disarmament situation, since it ends if the material component is ever not on your person, unless you can keep the material component on your person somehow, such as by swallowing it or implanting it in your body. 

Some of the most robust escape options tend to take the form of magic items, because most magic items don’t require speech to use, and because casting spells from magic items requires no components.

To escape from antimagic fields, your best bet is to carry non-magical tools such as a portable battering ram, a crowbar, and ideally some form of portable cover. If you’re trapped in the area of an antimagic field spell, remember that if you can get full cover from the point of origin, which is the center of the sphere, you won’t be in the area of effect, so if you can flip over a table to hide behind or similar you may be able to escape. In Tier 4 as an arcane caster, you should have some form of cover true polymorphed into a creature true polymorphed into a durable and portable object on your person at all times. It’s also wise to carry alchemist’s fire, acid, and potent poisons on you, so that you do have some ways of contributing in an antimagic field and you can counter monster Regeneration if necessary.

Securing Personal Effects

How do you defend against disarmament? Well, for typical disarmament in combat, the basic defense (which every character should have) is keeping backups. Martials should have numerous backup weapons, spellcasters should have backup component pouches/foci all about their person, and so on. Also, if you use a spellcasting focus, it should be strapped to your wrist, so that you can drop it and pick it up again freely. In fact, anything particularly important such as a staff of power may be worth literally chaining to your body. Relatedly, if you ride a broom of flying, you should invest in some manner of harness to avoid being knocked off. If you ride a flying mount, you could tie yourself to it so that even if you’re knocked off, you don’t fall all the way to the ground.

For theft, magic mouth is ideal. You can set up magic mouths on all important possessions and containers set to scream and yell “THIEF!” if any of your party’s things are taken by anyone without verbal permission.

For more thorough disarmament, such as when taken prisoner, various spells can be helpful. Leomund’s secret chest works great for this. Sequester can also work well. For example, if you have a portable hole, you could keep important things in it, sequester it, fold it, and strap it to the bottom of your foot. Particularly important items may be worth casting Drawmij’s instant summons on, ideally multiple times.

Appearing to Answer

If you’re ever caught in a zone of truth, you may be interested in ways to lie. Well, if you’re caught in a zone of truth unprepared and you’re wondering about this you may already be screwed. It’s best to be prepared!

• Illusions. If you can cast an illusion spell somehow, you can move your mouth as if speaking and have the illusion replicate the sound of your voice. This is easiest for Sorcerers with Subtle Spell and minor illusion. Other casters can do it with the likes of major image if they have forewarning.
• Magic mouth. If you can prepare some magic mouths on your person, you can set up common responses that you’d like to be able to “say” under a zone of truth. The biggest are affirmations and negations– you can prepare plenty of forms of “yes,” “correct,” “that is accurate,” “no,” “that’s false,” and so on. Make sure to prepare multiple instances of each word or phrase so that you don’t appear to be saying them the exact same way each time. Next, you should prepare claims of innocence, of course. “I didn’t do it.” “I’m innocent.” And so on. However, since these may be too generic, you can also prepare “fill in the blank” responses which you fill in using your real voice. “I was at [pause] from [pause] to [pause].” “I did not … “ Practice with these so that filling them in sounds natural. You can even prepare magic mouths with negations to insert like “n’t” and “not” to insert into truthful phrases, such that in court you say “I did (not) kill him,” or whatever. You can have the magic mouths triggered by subtle hand gestures, or you could have them triggered by forming the relevant mouth-shapes while your thumb and pinky are touching if that seems easier.
• Telepathic communication, and answering the wrong questions. The interrogator asks: “Did you kill [victim]? Answer yes or no.” Quickly, your homunculus or other telepathically bonded ally asks, “Do you have four arms?” You firmly say, “No.”

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Now go out there and be prepared!